Hey guys, well since Q left usenet I figured I would have to post over here... I wish I would have sooner :)

Hope you guys like this ;)

Epita

04-04-2003, 12:21 PM

thats good PR, nice DOF too are they CG clouds or a photo (ive scene clouds like that from CGI)

Epita

danilo

04-04-2003, 01:03 PM

it,s not DOF,its MB.
d

Imatk

04-04-2003, 05:28 PM

No it's a background image... no cg clouds :)

Zombat

04-05-2003, 08:04 AM

Very, very nice! To the untrained eye, anyone would believe that was simply a photograph. What'd be more impressive, of course, is if the background were CG clouds. But you knew that ;)

Imatk

04-06-2003, 01:36 AM

Heh, yeah I wonder how long it would take for those to render... yikes :)

ruud

04-06-2003, 07:21 AM

Cool image but I find the composition of the second jet somewhat wrong. I couldn't place that motion, does that jet come from the top or something? The poses get over to me as if they are just crossing each other.

Try a better formation break in there, could improve the image enormously!

And as the others said, cool model, fantastic textures and a beautifull render!!

Ruuter

groodwanderer

04-06-2003, 09:56 PM

Shouldn't there be some sort of heat distortion or flame coming out of the back of the jet engines. Just an idea. And the rear jet does have a funky pose can't quite figure out what is wrong with it. Maybe the movements need so to be more uniformed?:rolleyes: i don't know.

Imatk

04-06-2003, 10:13 PM

They're positioned like that because they just doged some SAM missles...:)

As for the exhaust I actually did some renders with exhaust but they really didn't look very good... probably because I was doing it wrong heh :)

Someone on another board noticed a big error... there were no tail fins on the back fighter!!

So I upped a new one with the fins :)

anieves

04-09-2003, 10:00 AM

I still wanna know where you got that BG pic from!!!;)

can anybody piont me in the right direction where to get cloud images from above? Google search is not finding any good ones like this one.

Mylenium

04-10-2003, 03:24 AM

Hi there,

Nicely done. As for exhaust: please NO. This is possibly the most stupid thing one could do. Actually this is the thing that ruins most renders (crappy Zippo style flames etc.). In normal cruise mode you would see almost nothing not even a tiny bit of smoke (at this height it dissipates very quickly in the air). However, there should be some heat waves (large difference between outer temperature and exhaust). Also I think you should add some streaks at the wing tips - if they dodged an SAM there would be serious compression. also some chaff/ flare would sell this idea better.

Mylenium

Epita

04-11-2003, 01:14 PM

good idea, but be careful, adding more stuf could make it to "full" and ruin the effect. i would like to see a new render, with fully done planes!

Epita

Imatk

04-12-2003, 12:41 PM

Thanks for the suggestions everyone...Epita what do mean by fully done planes?

Epita

04-12-2003, 12:48 PM

i dont mean more full planes (but with the 2nd plane done fully)

but if u put in flares and missiles, the scene could be to "busy" (thats the one) and ruin the effect. great work tho

Epita

Mr_Q

04-15-2003, 02:03 PM

Hey now!

Very cool man, good to see you came over here from that spammed out list!

banshee

04-16-2003, 05:51 AM

Very well done with the lighting and camera to match the clouds. The only "knit-pick" thing I see is the cockpit window. Not in the materials but what it is reflecting. Looking at the overall composition of the picture, it's obvious that the planes are above the cloud plane but in the reflection, it looks like its reflecting the ground on the lower side (closest to the viewer). Is there a gradient in the background? Maybe just adjust them to various levels of blue. Not sure whats set in your scene off camera. Ok, back to my corner now.
Oh, as far as flames... no, but maybe some type of heat vapor effect would be cool. Transparent, colorless but distorting with refraction. Worely's Taft collection has a plug called "Heat Wave" that would work well, costs $$$ but maybe Flay has something.

Imatk

04-16-2003, 03:45 PM

Hey Q... yes I followed you... I'm going to move up to stalking soon :)

Thanks for the comments Banshee I actually have the same image (backdrop) for a spherical map for the cockpit canopy. I also have it raytraced reflections so I'm not sure what it's reflecting there... but I'll have a look.

As for heat distortion I've been trying to figure out displacement mapping in After Effects for a while now and still haveen't come up with any decent results.

I'll check out the taft stuff and see though.

Mr_Q

04-16-2003, 03:56 PM

Ripple in AFX mini-crappy tutorial 101

Render out some nice contrasting voxel plumes. Make them white against black or you can just use them for the displacement. Be sure to render them with black occlusion objects as well. So you dont have heat plumes showing through your plane.

Take that in to AFX.

Create a new "adjusment layer". Add "Effect - Distort - Displacment Map" to it. Select the voxel plume seq as the adjustment layer. Have it use luminance for the hort. and vert. Displacement.

Now set your displacement settings to make it look all wiggly.

Anything BELOW the Adjustment layer in your comp will now have this wiggly [heat distortion] type of effect on it.

I am sure I left out some steps, but hopefully you can get the idea from that. Good luck!

Imatk

04-17-2003, 09:03 PM

Here's another shot of the planes with heat distortion thanks to Q....

I also added some vapor trails.

banshee

04-18-2003, 05:07 AM

Looks good. Gives it a much better feeling of motion. The cockpit glass reflections look much better now. :cool:

Rei

04-18-2003, 12:42 PM

good, the scene has 'movement' now.

There is something above the first planes left tail, an artifact from the heat wave.

Rei

Imatk

04-18-2003, 02:07 PM

Thanks guys... ok... at first I didn't see what you were talking about and now I do... yeah that distortion above the tail is from the heat ripple.

Imatk

04-18-2003, 02:16 PM

Here's one with a missle... don't know if I like this one though...

Rei

04-18-2003, 02:28 PM

What is that?

Rei

cgwolf

04-19-2003, 01:56 PM

Looks very nice especially to have cg clouds in the background. nice.

Imatk

04-21-2003, 06:59 AM

The clouds are actually a photo, but thanks anyway :)

legomanww

05-07-2003, 11:53 PM

Looks great!

I personally would have left the missile trail, trails over the wings, and heat waves out. The trails over the wings are too visible, and look out of place. Th heat waves just don't look right, doesn't look like the planes are moving, because the heat looks like it spread out real quick, and wasn't coming out before.

That's just my thoughts.

cavalos

05-08-2003, 09:48 AM

Cockpit is too glossy and "too perfect" at the edges.

jman66

05-08-2003, 12:35 PM

As far as the areas over the wings.... That's not heat....

Depending on atmospheric conditions, high Angle of Attack (AOA) maneuvers, there may be a sharp low pressure drop, which causes local condensation and creates a "fog" that hangs on the wing. On the FA/18 this local condensation ususally first forms over the strakes and stays close to the wing root as the air separates off of the surfaces. The fog then dissapears as the separated turbulent air moves back into the free stream. As it is now, the effect is really spread out too much on the wing, and there is little indication that there is a high enough AOA to generate that kind of inboard condensation in the first place.

The same kind of phenomenon happens at the wingtips, except wingtip vortices allow it to trail futher out into the free stream air until it dissipates.. I think you have the correct effect for your wingtips.

One place that you may notice a disturbance due to heat is in the exhaust plume, esp. if afterburners are engaged.

As for the SAM that's going up, it may make the scene look a little more urgent if the smoke plume doesnt leave the scene with that large of a diameter. Something a little bit smaller would indicate that the missle just passed them... making it seem closer to the time that they noticed the sam and started jinking/dispensing countermeasures etc.

keep up the great work!!

legomanww

05-09-2003, 12:16 AM

I know that those aren't heat over the wings, I was talking about the heat from the engines. I know what they are from, and they just don't look right as they are.